Another one that hurts

On the contrary. ISIS think they're going to win because God is on their side. A bit of despair and hopelessness and a sense of powerlessness would be just what the doctor ordered. But as we can't actually infect them with existential dread, I guess we'll just have to kill them.

Y'know, I really think some of them are. 'Cos, y'know, there are many people who don't like being beheaded. You gave up everything for them? Well, that was very noble of you. Some might say excessive. I haven't given up anything. Of course it's a tiny minority, Faith. That's just math. You count the number of Muslims blowing stuff up, you divide by the number of Muslims. This is not really arguable. You've had to move out of your house so refugees could move in? I'm so sorry. Or when you say "living space", are you perhaps thinking of a slightly less personal and more abstract concept.

So, you've given up everything to help refugees, and Tangle is being slaughtered by Muslims. Seems like a lot of people I know are having a rough day.

Claims. The word is claims. You know how they're bad people? I think they may occasionally tell fibs.

That's the more idealistic version? Why? Because of it being completely made up, that's why.

The UNHCR has a headcount. Feel free to conduct your own. Let us know how you get on. Otherwise, stop making stuff up. Here's another.

Feel free to supply the lacuna with anything that isn't made up.

Sadly, we can't give any of them refuge in case they're Muslim terrorists. You can never be too careful.

Evidently not.

It's a choice that hasn't particularly helped Americans avoid terrorist attacks. A good guy with a gun is not particularly effective against the detonation of a bomb. If everyone running the Boston Marathon had been armed, for example, it probably wouldn't have helped.

The pattern we're actually seeing is that in no case has an armed populace been effective against a terrorist attack. Maybe if the terrorists ever decide to use small arms to attack a Walmart in Texas.Curiously, the gun-lovers always tell us that if guns were banned than people would just use some other method of killing their enemies. The problems with this thesis are sufficiently obvious to occur to anyone who isn't a gun-lover. However, terrorists, who do not kill on impulse, do have plenty of time to choose their weapons, and if they ever contemplated a situation where using the wrong weapon would lead to them being shot by virtuous civilians, they could incorporate that into their planning and use another weapon. And this is in fact what has happened.

Fortunately since you're a good Christian it's not against your will, is it?... is it?

There's also a moral distinction between capital punishment and the police shooting someone who's on a shooting spree.

I think my metaphor works better. As Tangle points out, this isn't retributive, it's not like ISIS has stopped killing people and now we're dealing out rough justice. They're still going about killing people, it's a crime in progress, one long killing spree.

Because we haven't shot them all yet.If a whole bunch of ... let us say white supremacists ... invade a shopping mall and start shooting, then at the point at which the police have taken down two of them and the rest are still shooting, do the police need to consider a different tactic such as holding up a sign saying "WE SURRENDER"? --- because they are still killing people, so the measures taken by the police aren't working?Look, I don't like this. I don't like war. But the fact is that if these people aren't stopped (and there is no way to stop them except by force, because carefully reasoned polite argument hasn't worked) then they will carry on. And in doing so, given their track record, they will make Pol Pot look like Mary Poppins.If you have a better idea, then this would be a great time to suggest it.